Intermezzo II: Tokyo Nocturne
by Petronia
Summary: The night of the official formation of offensive unit Schwarz-neunzehn, Schuldich suffers from jet-lag... and Crawford doesn't.


**Intermezzo II: Tokyo Nocturne**

** July 24, 1995, 1:35am **

I'm not sure what I expected. Not this fucking professionalism, anyway.

The doors here are silent. I don't think he's ever lived here: he would have made certain that the hinges caught a little as they swung, replaced the eggshell carpeting with hardwood – some of those boards would squeak inevitably – had venetians hung over the floor-to-ceiling windows to break the penthouse into blind spots and lines of fire. For a precognitive, he likes his mundane early-warning systems in order. Or at least he did. I don't know.

He should have woken up by now.

I lean back against the doorframe, watching him sleep. He used to keep the curtains drawn, against surveillance or the brightness of the city; I would open them after he left. There are no curtains in this room yet. Tokyo is a smudge of rain-wet neon and firefly halogen beneath us, her skyscrapers hives of light suspended. It's enough to see by. Dark furniture, dark rumpled sheets, a glimpse of comparatively pale skin. He's one of those people who don't take up the whole of a large bed, just whichever side he happened to fall into. It gives me an odd hollow feeling, as if I – should be – but he'd wake up long before I could get my hands around his windpipe or my mouth around his cock or any other crazy shit I may be tempted to pull, so I stay where I am. He taught me before that I couldn't take him by surprise like that, a lesson that stuck close.

He was pissed at me, this afternoon, because I showed up without having gone over the files first. (I hadn't paid any attention at the briefing either.) I think he's quit smoking, and that or something else of the kind has made him edgier than when I knew him. Of course, back then I wouldn't have given a shit whether he was pissed at me or not, except to know if it translated into rougher sex that night. Back then I was too fucked up to even notice most of the time. Today it got _me_ pissed. We were in the middle of a shouting match in the fucking car before I realized I had no idea how to argue with him. That anything I said was going to slide right off him, because I had no handle to latch my words onto. He was walled off like West Berlin; still is now in fact, though he's asleep. I thought I would have to go up against him mind to mind – and I wasn't even certain that would work. It would mean something, if I couldn't make it work.

Then I realized what I really wanted to do was kiss him.

I know better, of course. As if that's a question. There's only so many times I'll let myself be fucked over the same way. Which leaves me standing in his doorway, fidgety and jet-lagged sleepless, wondering what package _he_ expected to pick up at the airport today. A professional? A subordinate, a team player? Someone who'd read his briefs and follow his orders? A business school grad in a suit like his? What the fuck were they supposed to have _done_ to me in there?

Whatever it was, it didn't take too well. Or maybe it did, and I just don't realize.

Is he going to wake up?

The anklet is in my breast pocket. I can feel it there, though of course it weighs nothing. To hell with Seraphita, once and for all – she could have given the charm to me without the chain. I can't wear it with the chain. May as well start shooting myself up all over again. Though I have to do that anyway: they've got me on some sort of treatment that does nothing for me one way or the other, which I gather is the purpose. Seraphita sent me a travel carrier for the syringes. Just the sort of gift she'd come up with, the good frau Doktor.

Cleaning me up is one thing I have to thank the Institut for, at least. If thank is the word. I was happy with the sex and the lack of little voices in my head - Crawford gave me all that just to keep me from leaving the hotel room, let me _charge_ it. And all the time we were busting drug rings. You have to laugh.

He's not going to wake up, I don't think. Apparently I'm not a threat tonight. Makes me feel like doing something "unpredictable" just to prove his talent wrong – but I like it where I am. I can watch him sleep; I can almost pretend. It's quiet. Quiet's been at a bit of a premium in my life.

It was never that bad awake. I don't remember _not_ having to put up with the voices. (Amnesia, the file says, though it doesn't bother me. If you go by the same file, those years aren't much of a loss.) It was only the upstairs in Mara's house that had the right kind of lining in the walls, and I wasn't even aware that was what did the trick. The rest of the time they were loud – nearly to the point where it hurt – but then people learn to work with that shit all the time. Nightclub bouncers, construction workers, heavy machinery operators. About the only difference was that my tinnitus was virtual. It was going to sleep that fucked me over: they get right into your head then, because you've got no way of keeping them out. You can't tell the difference. You're trapped, you're not _thinking_... I woke up screaming for a few nights, and then I stopped trying for shut-eye altogether. By the time I hooked up with the first guy who was interested in helping me deal with my issues, I hadn't closed my eyes for eleven days and he figured I was in withdrawal. It was a reasonable diagnosis, on the street. I was willing to try anything; he traded me a hit for a three-minute blowjob behind a youth hostel. What the fuck did I care at that point?

It could have been worse, come to think of it. Freebase would have rendered me a vegetable. It still fucks me up big time. For one of the "finals" at the Institut they made me do three lines before the run, to prove that I could hold up under the stress of increased sensitivity. I held; the bulletproof glass in the car didn't, but they had no points assigned to that.

Control took years to learn. It wasn't until eight months ago I could stand to sleep in a bed outside the Institut, without lead in the walls or methadone in my bloodstream. Crawford must have known he couldn't teach me. I'm not sure what that means. He could have been stringing me along; he could have had it planned from the first. Someone must have written the brief in my file, and it was probably him. "A marked desensitization to the primary euphoria analogous to that found in terminal cancer patients, probably accompanied by a similar lack of dependency"- fuck that. I was plenty dependent.

Twenty-three sheets of letterhead, single-spaced and typed. Sex wasn't mentioned once. It must have been him.

Which is the funny thing, really.

Because he never thought anything of the sort. Not as far as I could tell.

Even in his dreams.

We were dreaming together, by the end...

I didn't care this morning, knowing that I was going to him, that I was coming closer to him with every imperceptible kilometer clocked by the Concorde. I haven't really thought about it for years, in fact, and it had occurred to me at some point during the trip that if I could actually come face to face with him and still not care, it would be proof that I'd died back then in my Institut cell and not known it. I could have died from heroin withdrawal; I could have died just as well from the other want. It was all the same at that point.

And in fact I _didn't_ feel anything – nothing at all – and then we had the fight. Stupid-ass fight, the more I think about it.

And now?

I'm happy. I think.

It's a dumb side of the fence to come down on.

I have to put the chain away somewhere, before I forget and send my coat to dry-clean. And go to bed. At this rate he'll be up first.

Or I could just wait it out.

Is there any coffee in this place?

* * *

_— Montreal, July 2001_


End file.
